


terra sigillata

by Baekbitficfest, trulyfine (ssstrychnine)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 07:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10849569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baekbitficfest/pseuds/Baekbitficfest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/trulyfine
Summary: Baekhyun takes a pottery class where Yixing is an instructor. they eat hotteok together, try to out-flirt one another, and Baekhyun sort of tries to jerk off a clay dick.





	terra sigillata

**Author's Note:**

> Please be sure to leave the writer some lovely comments!
> 
> Thank you for reading <3

_Prompt #: 138_

_Title: Terra Sigillata_

_Pairing: baekhyun/yixing_

_Rating: Teen and up_

_Summary: baekhyun takes a pottery class where yixing is an instructor. they eat hotteok together, try to out-flirt one another, and baekhyun sort of tries to jerk off a clay dick._

_Word Count: 12789_

_Warnings: references to past baekhyun/taeyeon, non-graphic/vaguely described handjob (of aforementioned clay dick), background xiuchen_

_Author's Note: i had so much fun writing this, i hope you have fun reading it! apologies for my dubious pottery knowledge, i watched a lot of youtube tutorial things but i'm sure i still got everything wrong. prompter, i hope this is something close to what you wanted ♥_

 

* * *

 

 

Baekhyun isn’t sure how he gets talked into it, but that’s often the way when Minseok’s involved. He’ll appear with a crooked smile and suddenly he’ll find himself signing up for a triathlon or a bachelor auction or a pottery class. It’s the latter, this time, Minseok thinks that what has worked for him when he’s been in chaos, will work for Baekhyun now. Baekhyun is dubious. He appreciates the thought but he’s not sure he’s even really in chaos, he’s just a little distracted.  
  
“It’s just a nice old lady telling you how well you’re doing while you punch a bit of clay,” Minseok explains. “It’s relaxing.”  
  
“Then why aren’t you doing it?” asks Baekhyun, wrinkling his nose at the flyer Minseok had given him and then folding it into a fan. _Take a break, make a plate_. It’s a bad tagline; inexplicable English that doesn’t even rhyme properly. He fans himself. “It sounds boring.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure boring is exactly what you need,” says Minseok.  
  
He might be right. University is great and singing is great and getting to combine the two is especially great, but it’s also kind of overwhelming sometimes. Baekhyun doesn’t consider himself easily overwhelmed either, but he’s got lead vocal parts in three different performances at the end of the semester and his English diction class is kind of a nightmare and who knew the vocal major would involve so much opera? Well, he did, but it’s still kind of jarring every time he remembers that technically he’s on his way to being a trained opera singer. Weird. And it’s fine, but maybe he does need to punch a bit of clay or ten.  
  
“If I’m not totally zen by the end of the first class, I’m quitting,” he says, throwing the crumpled flyer onto the coffee table.  
  
“Do whatever you want,” says Minseok, rolling his eyes, “but if we get a bad mark for group performance I’ll have Jongdae sing you lullabies for a month.”  
  
Baekhyun shudders and Minseok flutters his fingers and leaves. He’s never made an idle threat in his life. Baekhyun leans forward, flattens the flyer out again. _Take a break, make a plate_.  
  
He’s late, because of course he’s late. Classes are on Sunday mornings and he set an alarm but pottery class doesn’t really have the same sense of urgency as regular class. He slouches through his morning routine and leaves the apartment without his phone and has to go back to get it. It’s only fifteen minutes, but it’s enough for the empty halls of the visual art department to unnerve him. He doesn’t visit often, the dirty orange-flecked lino reminds him too much of high school and the cork boards are all stuck with flyers for incomprehensible things like glass blowing and sculpture walks. Pottery is only marginally saner but it also seems significantly safer. Baekhyun is ninety percent sure that if he tried to blow glass he’d die.  
  
When he arrives, the door is closed, so he stands on his tiptoes, peers through the small window inside. There are rows of pottery wheels and chairs, students sitting there and poking at hard lumps of clay. There are rickety shelves of glossy painted vases, shuttered windows and dusty light. The instructor is at the front of the class, his back to Baekhyun, wearing an ugly patterned sweater several sizes too big, with a frayed hole at one elbow and a failed attempt at a patch. His outfit, at least, seems exactly like what a pottery instructor should wear, even though he is clearly not a nice old woman. Baekhyun takes a breath and paints on his sweetest smile, ready to explain that he had been saving ducklings or planting trees or whatever else someone who teaches art might be interested in, and he opens the door.  
  
Though the outfit is appropriate, the pottery instructor doesn’t look anything like Baekhyun had imagined. He turns and he smiles and for a moment Baekhyun thinks he must have been killed crossing the road because surely he is looking at an angel. He has sleepy eyes and soft black hair and actual dimples and Baekhyun looks away from his face to his shoes because they’re kind of falling apart and not so blindingly pretty. Are angels allowed to have wrecked slip-on shoes and half-unravelled sweaters and clay on their hands? Maybe. Maybe they’re all secretly pottery instructors. He can’t believe Minseok lied to him.  
  
“Are you here for the pottery class?” asks the angel.  
  
“Uh I... yeah,” stammers Baekhyun, falling over his words when he looks up and sees that smile again. “Sorry I’m late.”  
  
“It’s fine,” he hums, “I’m Yixing, please take a seat.” _Yixing_ , thinks Baekhyun, taking a place near the front. Maybe all angels are Chinese too.  
  
Baekhyun’s workstation is a wheel, gritty and brown-stained and empty. He presses his foot down on the pedal underneath and the wheel spins, making a sound like sandpaper. On the small side table attached to the wheel there is a roll of plastic wrap and a piece of wire strung between two wooden pegs and a bowl of water and a sponge. He watches Yixing cross the room. The back wall is all shelves, stacked high, and an enormous shallow sink. Baekhyun expects mason jars covered in a thousand years of old paint, crammed full of half-bristled paintbrushes mostly ruined by students who dip them into glue instead of pain. High school art class flashbacks. Instead, there are mason jars full of small metal spatulas and wooden scraping tools and thick needles that Baekhyun assumes are for cutting designs into clay. Most of the shelves are taken up by students work, the brightly glazed vases Baekhyun had seen through the window.  
  
Yixing goes straight to a shelf full of stacked slabs of clay wrapped in plastic. He untwists the top of a half-empty bag, dragging the plastic away from the sides, and with a piece of wire, like the one at Baekhyun’s table, cuts a thick slice from the top. He cuts that piece in half and then into quarters and these he brings to Baekhyun, hooking his ankle around the spare chair next to him and dragging it across the floor behind him so he can sit, clay juggled in both hands. Baekhyun tries to focus on anything other than his eyelashes, the silver hoop pushed through one earlobe, his full lower lip. He ends up staring at his knee, where the skin is showing through a rip in his faded black jeans.  
  
“You need to look after your clothes better,” he says, without thinking.  
  
“Probably,” Yixing sighs, tilting his head slightly, holding out his arms, wrinkling his nose at his cuffs. He’s smiling, but not enough to bring out his dimple. Baekhyun considers a career in comedy. “I wear old clothing because pottery is messy. Take this.” He tips the clay into Baekhyun’s hands, cold and smooth and damp. The other students have their clay on their wheels, apparently already experts, and they’re laughing at themselves, splashing water and spinning wheels, pounding their clay into shape. The clay Baekhyun has been given is in cubes, roughly fist-sized and smooth cut from the wire.  
  
“Do I need all of this?” he asks.  
  
“Blunt the corners, press it into balls,” Yixing nods at the clay in his hands and Baekhyun does as he’s asked. The clay isn’t soft and it takes a little time, moulding it into rough spheres. Yixing watches him as he does it, expression still and calm and soft. Baekhyun rolls the balls between his palms, trying to get their surfaces as smooth as he can as quickly as he can and Yixing laughs and Baekhyun feels a little bit like he’s already the best potter on the planet.  
  
“They don’t need to be so pretty,” says Yixing, crushing Baekhyun’s dreams. “Now wrap the spares in plastic and throw the last.”  
  
“I understood some of that sentence.”  
  
“What’s your name?”  
  
“Baekhyun.”  
  
Yixing stands up, dusting his hands off. Baekhyun wraps his spare clay in the plastic, tosses the remaining ball from palm to palm. He’s going to make a masterpiece, he decides. He’s going to make something so beautiful that Yixing has to name the class after him. He’s going to make something so beautiful that Yixing has to kiss him with that soft looking mouth. He’s going to make something so beautiful that Yixing has to... Baekhyun wrinkles his nose, brushes the thought from his head with a hand, presses his thumbs into the ball of clay instead, turns his focus back to the real Yixing, standing at the front.  
  
“Can someone show Baekhyun how to throw?” he asks the class.  
  
After that, it’s kind of mayhem. Pottery has a lot more physical force involved than Baekhyun had expected and some of the students seem to take great pride in casting their lumps of clay down onto their wheels with all of their strength. It’s louder than Baekhyun had expected too, with people laughing and the thumps of clay landing and the whir of wheels spinning. Yixing wanders through all of this like he’s the eye of their storm, gently pointing out problem throws and smiling at perfect ones and guiding student’s hands when they start to shape their works. Baekhyun watches his hands ghost over someone else’s and decides he might be the worst potter on the planet and need extra special attention.  
  
They work their way through the clay, pushing the centers out with their thumbs and spinning the sides up, smooth and easy. Or not smooth and easy, as Baekhyun quickly finds out, wetting his hands and spinning his first throw up and out too fast, until the clay folds in on itself in hollow waves. Yixing helps him to start again.  
  
"I'll be perfect next time," he says, confidently.  
  
“Of course,” says Yixing, so sincerely that anything Baekhyun might have said dies at his lips. And then he leans closer and Baekhyun has never really thought that mud smells that great but apparently it does when it’s attached to an angel. There is clay on his nose and Baekhyun wants to wipe it off and there is clay in his hair and he wants to run his hands through it. He grabs his own clay instead, folds it back into a ball, starts again.  
  
His first class yields a wonky looking vase that sits with a myriad of others, drying for a week before it can be fired. It’s definitely too thick, there’s barely any hollow to it, and the rim is unreasonably wavy, but Baekhyun’s a little proud of it all the same. It doesn’t fall over. He might be able to fit a handful of flowers in it. He’s doing to put it on his windowsill, next to his bed. He’s going to glaze it yellow.  
  
Just before the end of class, Yixing stands at the front and talks about pottery. About pieces being bone-dry and leather-dry and first firing and second and how you never really know how a glaze will turn out until it’s done but that’s part of the fun. Baekhyun listens intently, without really understanding much, distracted by the way Yixing’s mouth moves, the way his hands move, the way he pushes his sleeves up even though they fall down immediately, every time. He bites his lip when he fumbles over words and then he presses two fingers to his mouth like it’s his lips that have betrayed him, not the language. Baekhyun thinks he’s probably going to fail pottery class. Baekhyun thinks he’s going to throw himself at Yixing before the second class is over and it’s going to be horrific and embarrassing and he’s probably going to die. He has to quit, he can’t go back.  
  
“See you next time, Baekhyun,” says Yixing, waving cutely as he leaves.  
  
“Definitely,” Baekhyun squeaks.  
  
He goes straight home afterwards. There is clay under his fingernails and he feels kind of unbalanced, like anything might happen now, good or bad. He wonders if Minseok had known about Yixing, not a little old lady at all. It wouldn’t surprise him. Minseok is good at throwing his life out of order, he might do some of it on purpose.  
  
The apartment is empty when he gets back and he’s disappointed because he feels like he has something to share now. Yixing is at the tip of his tongue but there’s no one around to hear him. He skids around the living room in his socks, makes ramen, skims his vocal literature readings. He’s not much for the theory parts of the vocal major, but they’re a necessary evil.  
  
Jongdae comes back in the afternoon, all full of smiles and bright with autumn sun. Baekhyun waves to him with both hands from where he’s lying on the couch, defeated by his readings, and then he sits up and shuffles over so Jongdae can sit down next to him.  
  
“I’m converted,” he says, “I’m gonna be a potter.”  
  
“There’s someone pretty in your class?” Jongdae asks, eyebrows raised, seeing through him in an instant.  
  
“Someone unreal,” Baekhyun sighs, “I’m really doomed, I shouldn’t go back.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“He’s the teacher, isn’t that scandalous?”  
  
“He’s a pottery teacher,” Jongdae laughs, “and you don’t pay him or get marked, it’s not like you can blow him for a grade.”  
  
“I’d blow him for nothing.”  
  
“Don’t be gross,” Jongdae elbows him in the ribs.  
  
“Sorry, I’m just... he’s just... it was a weird class.”  
  
“Is it therapeutic though? The pottery?”  
  
“I don’t know, maybe, maybe hyung was just trying to set me up.”  
  
“Minseok-hyung doesn’t believe in romance.”  
  
“Unless it’s with you,” Baekhyun smirks. Jongdae just rolls his eyes and wriggles down a little further into the cushions of the couch. He used to get really dramatic whenever Baekhyun talked about him and Minseok’s relationship but now he just acts browbeaten about it and moody Jongdae is nowhere near as fun to tease. He sighs, pokes Jongdae in the ribs until he’s smiling again.  
  
When Minseok gets back, though, Jongdae shoots straight to his feet and Baekhyun laughs and he sits back down again, stiff and embarrassed. They’re not together, they’re just... _together_. Baekhyun doesn’t understand it.  
  
“Baekhyunnie’s in love with his pottery teacher,” Jongdae says, before Minseok has closed the door. Baekhyun sticks out his tongue.  
  
“The little old lady?” Minseok blinks, confused. He hangs up his coat, swaps his shoes for slippers, comes to sit with them, making Jongdae wriggle into the center.  
  
“No,” Baekhyun mourns, “the... the... Yixing. He has dimples.”  
  
“Oh no,” says Minseok.  
  
“Oh no,” sighs Baekhyun. Jongdae laughs. Jongdae shuffles a little closer to Minseok, tickles the inside of his wrist until he slaps his hand away. They’re the ones who should be doing therapy pottery, Baekhyun thinks, to punch through whatever repressed feelings are keeping them from kissing.  
  
Baekhyun’s weeks are never quiet, but he’s a little more comfortable with it than he has been lately. He sings, and he listens to other people sing, and it doesn’t make him want to run out of the room. No nails on a chalkboard edges to everything. He’s a good singer and every one of his classmates is a good singer but it gets crowded very quickly. Sometimes he wishes he could sit still and listen, be more like Minseok who doesn’t get big parts in group performances very often but who keeps everyone together. His voice makes everyone else sound better, it’s sweet and clear, not bold, not trying to compete with anyone, but necessary. It’s hard for Baekhyun to step back sometimes, hear other people sometimes. Well, except Jongdae, who is impossible to ignore.  
  
Pottery class sneaks up on him. He breezes through the week and then suddenly it’s Saturday night and he sets his alarm to wake him up fifteen minutes earlier than it had last week, so he can have a shower. He’d been flustered in the first class but now he will be perfect and charming. He will flutter his eyelashes and Yixing will blush. He will flutter his eyelashes and Yixing will blow him a kiss and they will abandon the class to make out in the kiln room where the air will be hot and their skin will be...  
  
“I must not seduce my pottery teacher,” he tells himself gravely, before he falls asleep. “I must not seduce my probably very straight pottery teacher.”  
  
His alarm gets him to class far too early and he’s leaning against the wall when Yixing arrives. He has a backpack on and a duffle bag slung over one shoulder and four or five canvas tote bags hanging off his arms and tangled earbuds hanging from one ear and a notebook between his teeth and he looks adorably hectic, like he might be overwhelmed by his belongings at any moment. Still an angel, but a smudgy sort of angel, an unraveled thread of an angel. Baekhyun stumbles in his haste to offer to carry something but he’s beaten by a pretty girl wearing a green jersey dress. Yixing opens his mouth to drop his notebook into one of the bags and then he smiles and gives her a different bag, so he can fumble with his keys and open the door. Baekhyun thinks that if he were a split second faster that smile would have been directed at him and he tries not to be bitter about it.  
  
Inside, he inspects his vase from the week before, chalky-dry and several shades lighter than it had been. It still looks acceptable. It still looks like it might hold water. It’s still kind of wavy where it shouldn’t be but there are definitely worse vases than his. Satisfied, he takes his seat, unwraps some of the clay he’d balled up the week before, dips his hand in water, moves to throw it and is stopped by Yixing, a hand on his wrist. Startled, he drops the ball and it clatters against the wheel and then rolls onto the floor. Yixing laughs.  
  
“We’re going to do coil pots today,” he says, kneeling down, picking up Baekhyun’s dropped clay, “you won’t need your wheel. We’ll do your bisque firing too.”  
  
“I... okay,” says Baekhyun, unsure about what any of it means but definitely sure he’s blushing. Yixing hands him his clay back, moves to the front of the class, and claps for attention.  
  
Coil pots turn out to be exactly what they sound like. Pieces of clay rolled out into thin lengths, coiled around a solid clay base, the seams smoothed out by hand. Baekhyun finds it incredibly relaxing, rolling the clay under his palms, looping it around the base and then pinching and smoothing down the bubbled walls. He gets a little lost in it and by the time Yixing taps him on the shoulder, to take him to the kiln room to fire his first piece, he has half of what he thinks is going to be a beautifully rounded pot with scalloped details at the rim, and he’s inordinately proud of it.  
  
“It’s pretty, right?” he asks Yixing, smoothing down a cut left by the edge of one of his fingernails.  
  
“Very pretty,” Yixing agrees, smiling. “Can you leave it for a bit and come with me?”  
  
Baekhyun follows him out of the room and down the hall. Yixing makes it a little less unfriendly, Baekhyun thinks, an art department to someone who isn’t an artist. He is wearing all black today, a plain sweater with clay all over the sleeves and front and cuffs that looks like they’ve been chewed on and it’s weird, how something as small as lived in clothing can make a person seem friendlier, less like a stranger even if they are. Baekhyun chews on his lip sometimes, like other people bite their nails or bite holes in their clothing, but that mostly just makes Jongdae yell at him.  
  
“I’m sorry I interrupted your coiling,” says Yixing, as they walk. “You looked... you looked very focussed.”  
  
“I like it,” Baekhyun shrugs, “it’s easier to keep under control than the wheel.”  
  
“I like it too,” he says, thoughtfully. He’s got the chewed cuff of his sleeve curled up in a fist and he holds it close to his mouth like even just the movement, just raising his hand to his mouth, helps him think. “It’s harder to get distracted when you coil, sometimes when I use the wheel I forget what I’m doing. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.”  
  
“I should try things that are hard though, right?”  
  
“Maybe,” Yixing shrugs, “if that’s why you’re taking the class.”  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t say anything to that, just nods, just looks at the little vase he’s holding carefully in his cupped palms. He’s supposed to be taking the class to relax and coiling had worked for that but he also kind of wants to make things that he’s proud of. Little vases and scalloped pots and whatever else you can make with clay. A mug that says _world’s best dad_ for Minseok. And it takes days to make just one thing, he can’t imagine he’ll be able to make a lot in just six weeks, but he’ll try.  
  
The kilns aren’t what Baekhyun expects. There are several of them and they look like old fashioned washing machines,  white top-loaders, not at all like the single, enormous mouth of fire he’d imagined. He stands on tiptoes to peer inside one of them and there are lines cut into ceramic, all the way down, like the gills of some huge fish.  
  
“That's it?” His voice echoes strangely against the ridged sides and he wonders what it would sound like if he sang into it.  
  
“It’s an electric kiln,” says Yixing, “what were you expecting?”  
  
“Fire,” pouts Baekhyun. He straightens, turns back to Yixing.  
  
“There’s heat,” he shrugs, “it does what it needs to. Did you want something more dramatic?”  
  
“Of course,” Baekhyun laughs, “but this will do.”  
  
Together, they put the vase into one of the kilns. It’s not the empty one but one that is full of other students work, waiting for a last piece. Yixing had wanted everyone to put the first thing that they made inside themselves and it seems kind of silly but also kind of really important when Baekhyun sees his little thing amongst all the others. He blows it a kiss and Yixing laughs, a little squeaky at the edges and a little soft and little wonderful.  
  
They go back to the classroom. Yixing swings his arms and Baekhyun hums under his breath. He continues on with his coil, smoothing everything that still needs smoothing. Yixing checks on the rest of the students, sitting with some of them, talking to them quietly, always soft and smiling. Baekhyun thinks, maybe, that the class is popular because of Yixing, a calming force in almost chaos. Even with his loose sleeves and million bags and tangled headphones.  
  
He finishes his coil piece before the class is over and it's not quite what he envisioned, it drifts a bit off center near the top, but he’s still proud. He puts it with the others to dry, plays with his leftover clay. Yixing comes to sit with him and they roll out pieces together, to make a silly miniature of Baekhyun’s pot. Yixing’s shoulder brushes Baekhyun's and he bites his lip when he's concentrating, a distracting sort of gesture, and Baekhyun decides that maybe it's the lip biting that makes the class popular. It's mostly girls and they all seem to need more help than Baekhyun does, which should be impossible because Baekhyun doesn’t know what he’s doing, even if coiling has been easier. He wonders what Yixing is studying. Maybe he’s an artist, maybe he makes dramatic pottery sculptures, nudes in clay. Maybe Baekhyun should offer to model for him. He loses track of what he's doing then, breaks the tiny pot they've made together when his hands slip, his thumb collapsing a side. Yixing laughs, nudges at him with his shoulder.  
  
“Dead,” he murmurs. “A tragedy.”  
  
“I'm sorry,” whispers Baekhyun, vaguely horrified. He picks up the remains of the pot, kneads it back into a ball.  
  
“We’ll make something else together next time.”  
  
“Yes,” breathes Baekhyun, ridiculous all over again.  
  
There had seemed like a million reasons for Baekhyun to go to the pottery class, when Minseok had first suggested it. To take a break and make a plate. To straighten out all his wobbles; his scratched high notes and forgotten lyrics and lost keys. His messed up diction and bad pronunciation and almost-failed theory tests. And though those things are all still important, he thinks he only has one reason now. An angel boy with his cuffs pulled over his knuckles. Minseok’s going to laugh at him. Minseok’s going to pinch his cheeks and tease him for the rest of his life.  
  
Honestly, Baekhyun isn't that worried about the other stuff, the life-changing stuff, the future-of-his-career stuff, he thinks he's just bored. Three years in and with a year to go and ready to be done everything with it all, to get to whatever’s next. His career as a singer or a singing teacher or a supermarket trolley boy. There's only so much formal education he can stand and he's almost at his limit, and Minseok means well, but he's a different sort of student than Baekhyun. He believes in five cups of ginseng a day and sweat-soaked gym routines and marshmallows as study rewards. Baekhyun drinks strawberry milk and gave up the gym after a month and eats marshmallows for every meal. None of that matters anyway, he can sing, right? Maybe he'll give it up and become a potter. Dedicate his life to perfectly sculpting Yixing’s nose.  
  
At home, Jongdae and Minseok watch a movie together. Normally, Baekhyun would watch it with them, all tangled up together on the couch and laughing through the serious bits, but Baekhyun had been using the practise rooms on campus and had come home after dark and they’re on the couch, closer than they need to be, talking quietly while the movie plays. Minseok is smiling in that way he does, only for Jongdae, like a kitten, like starlight. Neither of them look up when Baekhyun comes in, they're in a bubble, caught on one another’s eyes, and it makes him feel strange and lonely and tired. He goes to bed instead, even though it's not much past nine, and he dreams of melted glass and deep dark earth.  
  
At his third class, Baekhyun discovers that after bisque firing, clay turns pink.  
  
“Oh my god,” he breathes, poking at his vase so it wobbles and then settles. “It's so cute.”  
  
“A marshmallow,” says Yixing, standing beside him. “That's not yours.”  
  
“Oh,” Baekhyun laughs and another student reaches in front of him to pick up the vase he'd thought was his. He scans what's left behind, curved vessels, like paper lanterns against a sunset, pillowed things with hollow centers.  
  
Yixing points his out, touching it with the tips of his fingers. It's uglier than most of the others, than the one he'd thought was his. It's thick where it shouldn't be, the wobbly rim turned sharp and brittle by the kiln.  
  
“It’s your first child,” says Yixing, picking it up when Baekhyun doesn't. “It has personality.”  
  
“Just like its dad,” coos Baekhyun. Yixing drops it into his palms and he laughs again. He can fit three fingers inside the hollow of the vase, just.  
  
Yixing leaves him, goes to help another student distressed by what came out of the kiln. Baekhyun checks on his coil pot, leather dry and still just as beautiful. He likes the bisque pink but he doesn't think he'll keep it on his warped first born. He’ll glaze it yellow, garish and bright, and he’ll give it to Minseok because he hates ugly things.  
  
Wax comes before glaze, painting the foot of his ugly vase so that it doesn't stick to the kiln when fired, and the jars of wax have a hundred years of use layered on them and is kind of like high school art class, really, the evidence of students on every brush and jar. Baekhyun paints carefully, making sure there’s no surface that will stick against the heat.  
  
After that, there are small tiles of fired clay, brushed with stripes of different coloured glaze, and everyone spends forever staring at them, deciding how they want their little things to look. Yixing drifts between them, telling people which glazes need more than one coat and which work well with detailed works because they show up differently in ridges and lines, and none of it is really necessary because the most detail anyone has given their first piece is a wavy line at the rim or a shark-toothed pattern at the base, but Yixing talks about it so enthusiastically that everyone listens. Baekhyun picks the brightest glaze he can, vivid orange, not yellow, and he paints his vase so carefully he loses half the lesson in an instant and forgets to start something new.  
  
Yixing works at the front, at his own wheel, deft and quick and precise, compared to his students. He uses every part of his hands, the heels of his palms and the fleshy part of his thumb and the tips of his fingers. He uses more water than most of them and splatters red everywhere and Baekhyun paces the room, restless, trying to think of what to do next. Yixing waves a hand at him, sending droplets of water across the lino floor.  
  
“Baekhyun, would you mind? I'm a bit-” he wriggles his fingers, wet still with clay, “my sleeves, I mean.”  
  
“Oh,” says Baekhyun, and it shouldn't make him blush, but it does. Yixing’s sleeves fall over the backs of his hands, dangerously close to the wet muck, the edges of the cuffs a little red already. Baekhyun folds the cuff of one sleeve carefully, turning the fabric back, the backs of his fingers brushing over the warm skin of Yixing’s arm, a little cooler at the inside of his wrist. He shouldn't blush, folding back a sleeve, but he does, and then he folds the other one.  
  
“Thank you,” says Yixing, very solemn, sloe-eyed gaze holding Baekhyun still.  
  
“I'm uh... you're welcome,” is all Baekhyun can manage, but Yixing doesn't seem to notice how flustered he is, he turns back to whatever he's making, something low and flat and shallow.  
  
They set their leather pieces in two kilns, before the end of the class, and their glazed pieces in two more, with little pieces of card between each piece to keep them from sticking to one another. Yixing looks happy, bright eyed, and he does a little skip and jump of excitement when they close the kilns and Baekhyun has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from cooing. It's too much, _he's_ too much, and Baekhyun leaves the class feeling more buried by his crush than ever.  
  
At the apartment, Jongdae is cooking and Minseok is absent and Baekhyun swans into the kitchen thinking he might spill his guts, give some fake confession, just to distract himself a little bit.  
  
“I found something out about your potter,” says Jongdae, beating him to the punch, not looking up from the rice he's rinsing in the sink.  
  
“Is it bad?” asks Baekhyun, kind of hopeful, kind of scared. “I need to like him less, he's... I can't concentrate.”  
  
“It's... it's not bad, exactly,” Jongdae plays at thinking about it, turning off the water so he can turn around, tap at his mouth and furrow his brow and then smile like a moonlit cat.  
  
“Just tell me,” Baekhyun shoves him and he laughs, flicks water from his fingers at Baekhyun’s face.  
  
“He dances,” he says, pushing out his lower lip apologetically.  
  
“What do you mean? Everyone dances, _I_ dance if I’m-”  
  
“No, I mean he’s like... a dancer.”  
  
“No, he’s a pottery instructor.”  
  
“Oh my god, Baekhyun, he’s also a dancer, his instagram was on the studio noticeboard with a bunch of other people from the dance department. Zhang Yixing, right?”  
  
“Why are you doing this to me?” Baekhyun wails, covering his face with his hands. “Tell me he hates kittens and old people, tell me he doesn’t brush his teeth, don't tell me he’s a dancer.”  
  
“Fine, he hates kittens and he doesn’t shower.”  
  
“Liar.”  
  
“I’m sorry Baek,” Jongdae pats him on the shoulder, “unfortunately he’s perfect.”  
  
He spends an hour scrolling through page after page of instagram dance clips. It’s not fair, that he should be this soft person in sweaters with clay on his hands but also this sharp person in shadows with impossible control over his limbs and a terrible affinity for hip thrusts. It’s not fair because Baekhyun doesn’t think he can measure up, can’t imagine any conversation they might have where he doesn’t end up looking woefully inadequate. He attempts a couple of the dance moves in his socks in front of his bedroom mirror and almost kills himself when his feet slip out from under him and he crashes into the wall. He’s not built for dancing. He’s not built for dancers.  
  
Minseok appears eventually, to drag him away from his phone, using makgeolli as a lure. Minseok drinks it for its supposed health benefits but Baekhyun drinks it because it's cheap and doesn't taste quite as awful as soju. They hang out in the living room and sort of watch a terrible drama but mostly just talk about their weeks and Baekhyun gets pink and affectionate, curling up with Jongdae, tucking his hand under his arm, and Jongdae gets loud and excited, kicking over one of the plastic makgeolli bottles when he and Baekhyun argue about which of the drama’s lead are the most terrible, and Minseok stays almost exactly the same except his eyes get sleepy at the edges and he plays with Jongdae’s hair in a way he never would if he were sober. Baekhyun thinks it’s nice. He likes his friends like this, sweet and boneless.  
  
Eventually, Minseok disappears into his room because he has an earlier class than Jongdae and Baekhyun, and Jongdae and Baekhyun drift into Baekhyun’s room, ostensibly to go over some vocal tracks they’d recorded during the week but really because they’re not ready to go their separate ways yet. They sit on Baekhyun’s bed and Baekhyun giggles because it’s always kind of weird listening to a recording of yourself, no matter how many times you do it, and Jongdae hums along to Baekhyun’s bits because he thinks it’s funny. They pass the last bottle between them and the song ends and neither of them move. Jongdae sighs and Baekhyun swings the bottle between two fingers and it feels very much like they’re supposed to talk about something serious then, so Baekhyun does.  
  
“Why aren't you two together?” he asks, kicking at Jongdae’s feet. “It doesn't make sense, you're... it just doesn't make sense. Have you ever even kissed?”  
  
Jongdae smiles, a wistful sort of thing, and steals the bottle and drinks. “No,” he says, “we’ve never even kissed.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“If we kissed we’d have to get married,” Jongdae laughs, “and I don't want to do that yet.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“We’re... neither of us are good at casual, if we kissed then everything would move faster than we want.”  
  
“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard,” Baekhyun scoffs, drains the bottle, “you're already living together, you can’t get married here anyway.”  
  
Jongdae doesn't say anything, just shrugs, just stands up. He ruffles Baekhyun's hair before he leaves the room which he really shouldn't be allowed to do because he’s younger, but it's not really by enough that it’s meaningful. Baekhyun lies back down on his bed. He thinks that if he kissed Yixing they wouldn't have to get married, they'd just have to keep kissing.  
  
Sometimes, when he's in one particular vocal ensemble class, Baekhyun thinks that maybe there is something that’s stressing him out more than usual. Because all three of them, him and Minseok and Jongdae, are in the same group, but so is Kim Taeyeon, perfect and beautiful, who Baekhyun had dated for seven months a year prior. And their split was mutual, no one's fault, not really, but it's still awkward singing love songs with someone you used to love. He shuts his eyes a lot. His voice cracks a lot. More than it does in any other class. Minseok tells him to drink honey drinks and Jongdae laughs at him and Taeyeon says he’s _never_ looked after his voice properly and none of it is fair at all. He’s a good singer, he _does_ look after his voice. He doesn’t deserve to be harassed, even if it’s by people who don’t really mean it.  
  
It happens every time and as much as Minseok likes suggesting pottery classes he likes teasing Baekhyun more. After this class, a misty Wednesday, he leaves them all behind, thinking maybe he’ll get bubble tea or something with lots of butter, just to piss Minseok off. Maybe he’ll get ten hotteok and eat all of them and it’ll probably kill him but it’ll be worth it. He stalks across the campus, sulking as dramatically as he can, and when someone waves at him, silhouetted in sunlight, he almost yells, because too many people have been pulling him too many ways and he can’t deal with it, he’s not that big a person. But then the silhouette steps out of the sun and takes his cap off, pushes back his hair, puts it back on, and it’s Yixing of course, and it’s too late for Baekhyun to run away, and maybe he doesn’t want to anymore.  
  
It’s immediately obvious Yixing has come from dance practice, he’s dressed in shades of grey, soft clothing that moves easily and isn't nearly so ugly as his pottery outfits. Slightly flushed cheeks and slightly wet hair, at least the bits Baekhyun can see sticking out from under his cap. Apparently he has only one pair of shoes too because he’s wearing the same beat-up slip-ons he always wears and it’s inexplicably charming, or annoyingly charming, or exactly as charming as it should be, given the circumstances. Maybe he dances best in them. Maybe they give him luck. Baekhyun waves back, takes the space between them at a skip before he can remind himself to be a little more disaffected.  
  
“Hi,” says Yixing, hands in pockets, “good morning.”  
  
“You look different outside of class,” says Baekhyun, unable to stop himself. The sun is bright above them, the mist gone with the morning.  
  
“Cleaner?” Yixing suggests, smiling. The soft skin under his eyes seems a little bruised and more than anything he looks tired. In his grey dance clothes he reminds Baekhyun of the season that they’re in, autumn with crackling leaves and clouded breath in the morning and cold sun in the afternoon.  
  
“Just different,” he says, shrugging.  
  
“You look frustrated,” Yixing takes his cap off again, pushes his hair back again, swings the hat from his finger instead of putting it back on. “Would you like to get coffee with me?”  
  
“I don’t drink coffee,” says Baekhyun, stupidly, “but you should get hotteok with me.”  
  
“Isn’t that bad for you?”  
  
“No, no way, it’s the best for you, it’ll save your life.”  
  
“I’ve never had hotteok.”  
  
“Oh, then we have to get some,” Baekhyun resists the urge to take him by the hand, pull him away, across campus to the little hotteok truck by the smallest auditorium. He clasps his hands behind his back instead, smiles winningly.  
  
“Okay,” says Yixing, “take me there.”  
  
They walk across campus together, falling easily into step with one another. They don’t say much, but it isn’t uncomfortable, not really. Baekhyun squashes the urge to announce that he knows Yixing’s instagram, that he kind of knows a couple of his dance moves now, would he like to see? Maybe his bad dancing would be as charming as Yixing’s broken shoes. He doesn’t though, he settles for a self-conscious sort of skip in his step instead, his fluttering heartbeat pushed out through his feet.  
  
The truck isn’t busy. It’s not quite lunch time and most students leave campus to eat anyway. Baekhyun gets them both pancakes and Yixing coffee even though he protests. If it’s his first time eating it he shouldn’t buy, Baekhyun explains, and he has to play the good host, even if he’s younger and Yixing’s been in Korea for years.  
  
“We can go to China one day and you can buy me something there,” he jokes, putting his wallet away.  
  
They watch the pancakes being made, sticky balls of dough flattened out across the oil pan with a silver press, white and then yellow and then gold. When they’re cooked they’re dropped into paper bags, hot enough to burn and crispy at the edges.  
  
“I’ll buy you Chinese pancakes in Korea,” Yixing says, taking his coffee and his paper bag.  
  
“Only if they’re just as bad for me.”  
  
They sit at a bench under gold and red leaved trees. Baekhyun traces the edges of their shadows across the table. He watches Yixing hold the pancake up to his face, take a selfie with the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips, his eyes closed. Then he takes his first bite of the sweet pancake, licks his lips, grins around his mouthful, dimples and all, and that’s even worse. Baekhyun busies himself with his own pancake so he doesn’t look so much like he can’t look away. It’s burnt-sweet and sticky and perfect. He’s forgotten his morning classes already, Jongdae laughing and the way his voice had scratched and Minseok telling him he needs to look after himself better and Taeyeon agreeing. It’s nothing, just teasing. All he really needs is sugar pancakes and Yixing wearing sweatpants.  
  
“What are you studying?” Yixing asks, when they’re settled into eating.  
  
“I’m a singer,” Baekhyun wrinkles his nose, “I’m gonna be like... the Korean Taylor Swift. If she had, you know... actual vocal training.”  
  
“You want to be an idol?”  
  
“Oh, no, I don’t know, I just want to sing,” he shrugs. “I auditioned a couple of times when I was a teenager but didn't get anywhere.” He waits for Yixing to do what everyone who isn't a vocal major always does, ask him to sing something, like he’s been waiting for the opportunity to show off, but he doesn't. Baekhyun frowns, caught between being grateful for it and annoyed because actually he wouldn’t mind showing off for Yixing.  
  
“What do you do?” he asks, even though he knows. Yixing plays with the plastic top of his coffee, breaking the rim into pieces like teeth.  
  
“I dance,” he says. “Or... well, I’m a choreography major.”  
  
“So you... write the dances?” Baekhyun asks, a stupid question, or at least the wrong way to ask it. But it makes Yixing laugh, a scratchy, wrinkled-nose laugh, and Baekhyun vows to ask stupid things of him more often, just to hear it.  
  
“I guess,” he says, when he’s quieted but still smiling. “I dance and I write dances and I make vases.”  
  
“But do you want to be a dancer or a choreographer or a potter?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Yixing shrugs, licks the sugar from his fingers, “I just want to live... simply. I don’t mind what I do so long as it’s uncomplicated, with people I love.”  
  
For some reason this catches Baekhyun off guard, he hadn’t thought his question would prompt something so... nice and comforting and... sweet. He wriggles in his seat, dips his finger in the brown sugar syrup leaking from his half-eaten pancake, sucks on it until he feels less like blurting out an embarrassing confession or proposing marriage.  
  
“I don’t know how to be uncomplicated,” he says, taking his finger out of his mouth, tearing small pieces from the paper bag and then blowing them onto the ground. Eating more of his pancake. “Trouble always finds me.”  
  
“Honestly, I’m not very good at it either,” Yixing admits, “but I think I’m getting better. We can help each other.”  
  
Baekhyun stuffs the last piece of his pancake in his mouth, nods fervently, better to say nothing than something embarrassing.  
  
When they’re both finished eating, they sit for a while. Yixing tells Baekhyun about a dance he’s working out, a group project, turning bodies into falling leaves. He’s in his fourth year, his final year, and he’s not quite sure what will happen next, but he doesn’t think it matters much. He’ll work it out. He’d like to have a studio of his own one day. Baekhyun tells him about his own group project, the strange awkwardness of having to do something like that with an ex, even if you don’t hate them. Yixing offers him soft advice, tells him he ought to work hard to make the performance easier for everyone, and he’s right, of course, and it’s kind of annoying that he’s right and that he’s so easy to talk to.  
  
“Did you ever have to do anything like that?” he asks. “Work with someone you dated?”  
  
“I don’t go out with dancers,” he shrugs, “they’re all like me and I’m not a good boyfriend.”  
  
“I doubt that,” Baekhyun scoffs and then he looks away, pulls the collar of his sweater up to his mouth to try and hide that he’s blushing. Yixing laughs.  
  
“No, I am, I forget things like anniversaries and birthdays and I stay up too late or don't sleep at all and I don’t know how to be romantic,” he smiles sheepishly, moves like he’s about to run his hand through his hair but knocks his empty coffee cup over with his elbow instead. “If this were a date that cup would be full and I would knock it into your lap,” he says, eyes bright, flicking the cup across the table with a finger.  
  
“If this were a date I wouldn't care,” says Baekhyun, a little dazzled, hardly able to think anymore. Yixing is looking at him with this soft expression, thoughtful and sweet, and it's just a conversation, nothing else, but Baekhyun can hardly breathe. He folds his hotteok bag in half and then in half again, concentrating on pressing down the folds, so he can't see it if Yixing starts laughing at him.  
  
“You don't seem complicated,” says Yixing, after a long pause. Baekhyun looks up and he’s still soft, still thoughtful, still sweet. He’s fiddling with his earring and he’s sucked his lower lip into his mouth and Baekhyun is fucked, well and truly doomed, and it takes everything in him not to shrivel into nothing then and there.  
  
“Okay, change of plan,” he says, later, catching Jongdae’s hand as he walks passed him through the lounge. Jongdae yanks his hand away but sits down next to Baekhyun anyway, shoving his feet off the couch to make room.  
  
“I didn’t think we had any plans to change at the moment.”  
  
“I have to make him fall in love with me.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Zhang Yixing, pottery instructor, dancing god with a... a face sculpted by... I don’t know, whoever made that one famous naked guy.”  
  
“I thought you were avoiding him for all of those reasons.”  
  
“Yeah, but I... I saw him outside of class today and I realised that if he loves someone else I’ll probably die. He cannot not be in love with me.”  
  
“Ah,” says Jongdae, gravely, “how are you going to make it happen?”  
  
“Just general charm and charisma,” Baekhyun narrows his eyes. “You don’t think I can?”  
  
“I could do it better,” Jongdae grins, leans back, shuts his eyes. “Want any tips?”  
  
“I might ask you if we decide to exist in mutual pining for two years, but thanks.”  
  
He leaves Jongdae pouting behind him and goes to his room. He's not really sure what he wants to do now. Yixing had been sweet and interesting and it's something kind of different than him just being the super-hot pottery instructor of his dreams. He's almost a real person now. Like, the sort of person you go on dates with. Baekhyun doesn't really know how to flirt with someone he wants to date. What if it makes Yixing uncomfortable but he’s too nice to say anything? Usually Baekhyun goes to clubs where everyone is there for a single purpose or he gets set up by his friends like he had been with Taeyeon and that stuff is easy, but he isn’t sure he knows how to flirt without an already established romantic expectation. He doesn’t know how to flirt over a pottery wheel. He practices winking in the mirror but it just looks awkward on his face. He thinks if Yixing winked at him he would melt into a puddle.  
  
In the fourth class, Yixing seems even more tired than he had when they ate hotteok together. His dark circles are worse and he’s restless, pacing the classroom like it’s the only thing keeping him awake, running a hand through his hair until it sticks out everywhere. He still helps anyone who asks him, still greets the class with a smile, but it’s a small smile, slow and exhausted. Baekhyun has worn his tightest jeans and a stupid t-shirt with the collar cut out but as soon as he sees Yixing so sleepy he forgets about flirting, watches him like a hawk instead, kind of worried he’s going to keel over, faceplant into someone’s clay masterpiece.  
  
He doesn’t get much done. His first vase is bright and ugly and perfect and he wraps it in newspaper and tucks it into his bag. His coil pot is the same milky pink that the vase was and he thinks it’s quite lovely, just like that, and he calls Yixing over to tell him so and because he wants to talk to him and because he wants to try and make him seem less tired.  
  
“Can I keep it like this?” he asks, when Yixing appears, dragging a chair with him to sit down. “Pink, I mean.”  
  
“You can glaze it clear,” says Yixing, nodding, yawning.  
  
“I’m going to give it to my grandmother,” says Baekhyun, dragging a finger along the rim. “Do you need coffee?”  
  
“What?” Yixing blinks, blinks again.  
  
“You seem tired.”  
  
Yixing hums, shrugs, follows Baekhyun's finger around the edge of the vase with his own until their wrists cross over, knock together, and they both pull away, smiling. Baekhyun thinks of flirting again, touching him again. He would like to run a hand through his hair like he's been doing all morning, smooth it out instead of messing it up, push it back of his face, tuck the little curly bits behind his ears.  
  
“Hey Yixing,” he says, nudging at his shoulder, “do you have a map?”  
  
“A map?” he blinks, sleepy and confused.  
  
“Cause I've lost my way to your heart,” he finishes, throwing up a victory sign and smiling with everything he’s got.  
  
Yixing looks bewildered for a moment, but then his face clears and he starts to laugh, swaying into Baekhyun's side. “Baekhyun-”  
  
“I've stopped blinking lately, because I always want to see your face,” he winks, so outrageous it can't be awkward, not even on him.  
  
“Stop,” Yixing groans, waving a hand in front of his face like he's brushing away flies. He's smiling though, so pretty Baekhyun thinks his heart might stop.  
  
“There are three people who I love in this world, wanna know who they are?”  
  
“I think you'll say it's me,” says Yixing, conspiratorially, leaning closer still. “Me from the past, me in the present, and me in the future.”  
  
“You've been flirting with other people? I'm heartbroken.”  
  
“That's not flirting, that's...” he shrugs, “they're jokes, right?”  
  
Baekhyun is suddenly aware that they're in a classroom, the sound of spinning wheels and quiet students, Yixing warm against his side but just because they're talking about pottery and Baekhyun's making stupid jokes. He looks down, smiles at his palms, flicks a fingernail against the side of his pot.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Can we do a clear glaze then?”  
  
“Of course,” says Yixing, and he stands up.  
  
He sits, frowning at his clay, after that. He's not sure what to make now, he's done two different kinds of vases, is pottery all just vases? There are teapots on the shelves but that seems a little complicated, separate pieces that have to fit into one another. He pokes at his clay with an index finger. He’s supposed to see something in the clay, right? The finished product. He's pretty sure he's supposed to look at that red brown lump and see a turtle ashtray or something. He ends up trying to make something like what he'd seen Yixing working on the week before, a wide oval dish, not deep, maybe a fruit bowl. He'll glaze it green and give it to his mum, full of strawberries.  
  
On Wednesday, the day he’d run into Yixing before, Baekhyun loiters around the place he’d met him. He kicks out at the curb, overbalances, sits down on the sidewalk. It's not as sunny as it had been then but he stills think he'll see Yixing step out of shadow into light. He doesn't though, he doesn't show up at all. Baekhyun braces his arms against his knees, rests his chin at the crook of his elbow, and watches an ant navigate gravel. He gets bored quickly, stands up and skulks off to the vocal rooms instead.  
  
He sings all afternoon, his favourite songs, things he knows he can make sound good. He locks himself in one of the booths and he doesn't record it, just sings, because he feels like he hasn't in a thousand years, not for himself. When his throat starts to feel tight and dry he stops, leaves, spots Jongdae in one of the other booths. There aren’t enough people in the vocal major, he thinks, pulling the fingers at him through the glass. Jongdae has his eyes closed and doesn’t see but Baekhyun doesn’t care, it wasn’t for him. He’s probably singing about Minseok, something romantic and tragic and disgusting. When he plays it for the class to critique he’ll lower his eyes and Minseok will pretend he doesn’t know what he’s singing about. Baekhyun wonders how angry Minseok would be if he suggested they go to couples counselling. Is pre-couples counselling a thing? Getting everything out on the table before turning a friendship into a romance. Like they don’t already know everything there is to know about one another.  
  
For the fifth class, Baekhyun decides he’ll up his game. It's close to the last time he’ll see Yixing, after all, he may as well embarrass himself completely. He wears blue jeans and a t-shirt that’s a tiny bit too small for him, the sort that rides up if he shrugs his shoulders. He lounges in his seat, and when Yixing comes to talk to him he smiles, licks his lips.  
  
“I like your shirt,” he says, pitching his voice low, “but I think it’d look better on my bedroom floor.”  
  
Yixing doesn’t say anything, but he smiles and it’s something in that smile, the twist of humour at the corners of his mouth or the way his eyes drift half closed, that makes Baekhyun realise that he knows none of it’s been a joke, he knows exactly what Baekhyun’s been trying to do. It’s more shocking than it should be, that Yixing has been knowingly twisting him up in knots, because Baekhyun’s sure he’s supposed to be the only one doing the flirting. He's supposed to use bad pickup lines that make Yixing laugh and he's supposed to wink badly and he's supposed to wear his tightest jeans even though it's kind of hard to sit behind a potter’s wheel like that. And of course he's done all of those things but now it's clear that Yixing has been doing his own version of them as well. Soft compliments and ridiculous tears in his clothing and the way he pushes his hair back.  
  
Baekhyun is confused for a moment and then excited and then outraged. How dare he be beaten at flirting by a pottery instructor. No, not beaten, challenged. He tips himself further back in his chair, meets Yixing’s smile with narrowed eyes.  
  
“You know, I have no gag reflex,” he says, following his tongue with his teeth across his lower lip. Yixing laughs, scratched-soft disbelief, and he covers his mouth with his hand and his cheeks flush pink. Baekhyun is triumphant. But then he stands up, turns away, heads across the class to where another student is calling for him, and he leans his palms against his back pockets while he’s talking and when he drops his hands back to his sides there are smudged clay handprints on his ass and Baekhyun knows he’s been beaten again.  
  
“Zhang Yixing is the devil,” he declares, back at his apartment, to Jongdae who is lying on the floor, yelling scales to the ceiling.  
  
“I thought he was an angel,” Jongdae frowns and sits up. “You said he was a literal angel sent from heaven.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like me,” Baekhyun shakes his head, flops down next to Jongdae, leaning against him heavily. “He’s definitely the devil. He marked his ass for me, I almost had a heart attack.”  
  
“He did _what_?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter, I have to up my game.”  
  
“It better not involve public nudity.”  
  
“No, I’ve learned my lesson.”  
  
Baekhyun sighs, falls more fully against Jongdae, who pushes him back, and they jostle at each other until they’re both lying on the floor. Jongdae starts his scales up again and Baekhyun joins him and that’s how Minseok finds them, when he gets back from class a little later. He doesn’t say anything, just raises his eyebrows in that way he does and then disappears into his room.  
  
That Sunday is the last class. Two hours to glaze his fruit dish and make something new and then he only has to go back if he wants to fire the last thing, once it’s dry. Yixing says that most of the time he’s left with a thousand bare, dry pieces, forgotten by their student potters. Sometimes he glazes them himself. It’s relaxing, he says. Baekhyun isn’t really sure what he’ll do but if Yixing hasn’t fallen in love with him before the two hours are up he’s going to have to come back. They can glaze his final vase together, take turns with the wax brush, lower it into the kiln with held hands.  
  
Yixing touches his arm as he walks into the classroom, palm sliding over his shoulder, squeezing slightly, and then gone. Baekhyun’s tongue feels numb, he tucks his own hand under the wide neck of his sweater, over his shoulder, tracing the the touch against skin. He has to make something beautiful today, he thinks, something so pretty Yixing smiles. It's not like he'll have another chance. Yixing moves to the front of the class.  
  
"Our last class," he says, a little sheepish, a lot self-conscious. “This was my first time taking it and... it was fun, you made it fun, so thank you. I’m not sure I'm a good teacher but you've all made something and that's all I wanted. I'll still be here a lot, come and visit me, maybe.” He's looking at Baekhyun as he says this and Baekhyun leans back in his chair, hooded eyes and a smirk, pretending he's someone good at this sort of stuff, slick winks and sinful smiles.  
  
His attempt at a fruit bowl is too ugly, too boring, just an almost flat slab of pink with uncertain edges and an uneven base. Baekhyun wants to make something new. No, he wants to seduce Yixing. No, he wants to kiss his hand. He stares at the clay in front of him. He thinks he’s getting better at it, thinks he kind of loves the wonky vases he’s made so far, even if the fruit bowl’s a lost cause. But he’s distracted now, he feels a little deranged. Yixing is moving through the class and he’s playing Baekhyun’s game today, and his jeans are ripped to shreds and skin tight.  
  
Baekhyun wets his hands, starts the wheel and then stops it without doing anything. He wants to beat him. He wants to see how far he can go before Yixing breaks a little. No, really he just wants to see Yixing blush, he’d been so pretty with pink cheeks. Suddenly he knows what he wants to do. Something absurd, something ridiculous. He starts the wheel again, presses the heels of his palms into the clay, heavy and hard, pushing it up into a narrow column.  
  
A penis isn't that different from a piece of clay, really. Soft sometimes, hard sometimes, kind of long and narrow sometimes. Baekhyun shapes his clay, tongue sticking out of his mouth, and when it's perfect, he starts to jerk it off. In as much as pumping a hand up and down a shaft of clay can be called jerking off, before it gets too skinny and unstable and folds over on itself. Baekhyun winces, tries again. He's good at handjobs, he’s been told. Pretty hands. Soft. He wets his pretty hands, slows the wheel down, concentrates on keeping the clays shape and on his movements, as suggestive as he can get. The student next to him is watching him out of the corner of her eye. He grins at her and she turns abruptly away. The clay penis breaks again.  
  
He frowns, stops. Without clay balls there's only so much he can do, he’s not a miracle worker. He scowls at it, brushes his hands together, wrinkling his nose at the squelching sound of wet palms sticking. Maybe he should blow it.  
  
“Are you having trouble, Baekhyun?” Yixing asks, startling him. His expression is so carefully blank that Baekhyun knows he’s seen what he’s been doing. He isn't sure what happens now. The clay penis is wilting in front of him.  
  
“I...” he frowns, “I want to make something good for the last class.” He wants to make something new and good that isn’t a limp dick. Yixing raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Do you want to start again? I can help you.”  
  
Baekhyun folds his clay dick back into a ball, throws it, gets the wheel starting again. Wet hands and the strange, smooth-grit of spinning clay. Yixing sits opposite him, watching, gaze so steady Baekhyun feels a little off-balance again. He’s very rapidly realising that he had actually attempted to jerk off a piece of clay, had considered _blowing_ a piece of clay, and Yixing had definitely seen it and wow, okay, he kind of wants to die now, why did he _do_ that? He moves to pull his hands away from the wheel, cover his face maybe, but then Yixing is there, hands over his, palms cool and wet, expression serious, and he can’t move.  
  
“You wanna make a mug?”  
  
“A what?”  
  
“You’ll have to... you’ll have to come back tomorrow to add the handle, and then again to fire it and then... or I could do that and deliver it to you later.”  
  
“No, I’ll come,” says Baekhyun, in a rush, “we can make a mug.” It feels strangely like they’re not talking about mugs at all and Yixing’s hands are on his still and the wheel is still spinning.  
  
“Good,” he says, smiling brightly.  
  
They get rid of half of the clay on the wheel and start again. A coffee mug, with a dip at the middle. Baekhyun isn't going to drink out of anything else.  
  
Most of the class think they're experts by now so Yixing isn't called away often, except by those who think he's pretty. Baekhyun doesn't mind, he feels full of sunshine, making what is sure to be an ugly cup with Yixing. Not really even embarrassed about the dick thing. When class is nearly over it sits still and level and Baekhyun grins.  
  
“Can I write something on it? Like... world's best lover?” he asks, splaying his hands out in front of him like it’s a banner he’s seeing, not a cup.  
  
“Only if it's true,” says Yixing quietly, all dimples, biting his lip.  
  
“I don't tell lies.”  
  
They grin at each other, stupid smiles, heart-eyed smiles, and Baekhyun looks away first because it's too much to accept, that Yixing might look at him like that. That this might actually be a real thing that's happening. He doesn’t know how he did it. Surely not by blushing every time he spoke. Surely not by making a penis out of clay.  
  
“Stay,” says Yixing, expression a little quieter, fonder, “stay for a while.”  
  
“Alright,” says Baekhyun.  
  
The other students file out, wave at Yixing, thank him, swear they're coming back for their half-finished pieces. Yixing smiles at them and nods and a few of them stop to talk to him for a moment. Baekhyun looks at the mug they've made, a wide base that curves in gently and then out again at the lip, the lines their hands put into it, the hollowed inside. Yixing had made the handle piece free-hand, an elegant S, and they'll attach it tomorrow, when the clay is leather dry.  
  
Baekhyun goes and washes his hands, fills the sink with cloudy grey, lathers up his hands until they're slippery with soap and then rinses them until his knuckles are red. He doesn't know what will happen now. They'll talk about what each of them have planned for their lives after pottery class. Baekhyun will tell him he's better at singing with Taeyeon now, there's nothing there to worry about except his voice and the voices of the group and how they sound together. Yixing will tell him he's misunderstood something, his smiles mean nothing, their shared mug means nothing. Baekhyun will smile close-mouthed and nod fervently and avoid eye contact and leave as quickly as he can. He dries his hands and goes back to his table, kicks at his backpack on the floor.  
  
Yixing crosses the room, closes the door and locks it. It's so deliberate, so sure, that twist and click, that everything else in Baekhyun’s head clears out. There is clay under his fingernails that he couldn’t get out with just soap and water. He needs a nail brush. He needs Yixing to touch him. Yixing’s hand rests on the door for a moment before he turns back. He looks solid and certain, his mouth is set and his steps are sharp and his eyes are clear. He comes back and he steps into Baekhyun’s space and kisses him. Something in Baekhyun’s chest stutters and burns out and then bursts back into white hot life. He kisses back, kisses Yixing’s soft mouth, and for a moment they’re not touching anywhere but their lips but then he takes Baekhyun’s wrist in one steady hand and curls the other around his neck and takes another step forward, putting them chest to chest, overlapping bodies.  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t know what to do but kiss him. Kiss his mouth open, tongues and teeth, and grip the collar of his shirt like he’ll fall without it. Baekhyun’s teeth graze Yixing’s lower lip and he smiles under it. Baekhyun pulls back, just a breath, and then he kisses Yixing’s nose, his cheek, because he wants to, because he’s there. He’s embarrassed by it immediately and he blushes, pulls away further, but Yixing laughs, eyes close to closed, voice scratching, and he closes the distance between them again, to kiss the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth, his temple, his jaw, soft and sweet.  
  
“Don’t move,” he says, so Baekhyun doesn’t. Yixing smells like clay, like water. His hair smells like lemons. Baekhyun wants to bite him, kiss marks into his skin, hold his hand. He doesn’t do any of it, he stands still and Yixing brushes his hair back from his face, smiles, splays his hands across his collarbones, thumbs resting at the hollow of his throat, fingerprints pressed to his shoulders.  
  
“I’m a bad boyfriend too,” blurts Baekhyun, the words pushed forward by the way their closeness isn’t casual, doesn’t feel like some one-time thing, but like the start of a thousand days. It’s scary. Thinking about holding hands is scary and wonderful. “Like you... like you said.”  
  
Yixing looks confused for a moment, a furrowed brow and his mouth pushed forward into a pout, but then he must figure it out because he relaxes into Baekhyun again, smooths his hands across his shoulders.  
  
“A bad boyfriend, like me,” he hums. “That’s alright.”  
  
“Not that we’re boyfriends or anything, not that... I mean this is... “  
  
“We’ll have to share custody of the mug if we break up,” says Yixing. “We have to think about this seriously.”  
  
“You can have it, I’m sure I’m a bad parent too,” says Baekhyun. Yixing’s hands have moved down his arms, are at his waist now, pulling at the extra fabric of his sweater, gathering it in handfuls.  
  
“I think we should go on a date,” he says.    
  
“Yes,” say Baekhyun immediately. Yixing laughs, pulls him forward, and they kiss again, deep and slow and quiet.  
  
At the apartment, later, Baekhyun throws himself onto the living room couch. His mouth feels swollen, he tugs on his lower lip, pushes it out as far as he can, crosses his eyes trying to see it. He kind of hopes he looks wrecked. He _feels_ wrecked. He has Yixing’s number on his phone and he's going to see him tomorrow to finish the mug anyway but they’re also going to eat together sometime this week. Baekhyun kind of wants to just get hotteok with him again, sit in the sun, but he’s sure anything will be nice. He wonders how many dates they have to go on before Yixing will dance for him. He hopes it’s a lot and he hopes it's hardly any at all.  
  
Jongdae and Minseok come home together, laden down with groceries, and Baekhyun holds his hands in his lap to keep himself from leaping to his feet immediately. He follows them to the kitchen slowly, helps them unload the groceries until he finds strawberry milk and takes it, skips back to the couch.  
  
“You’re a pest,” says Minseok, a sigh in his voice.  
  
“Pink for love,” says Baekhyun happily, peeling back the silver foil top and licking it clean. “Don't be bitter.”  
  
“Don't be cryptic,” says Jongdae, flopping down beside him.  
  
“Yixing kissed me,” he sings, “we kissed and now we're going on a date.”  
  
Jongdae takes the milk off him, takes a sip like he’s knocking back something stronger, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Baekhyun laughs and elbows him in the ribs and then Minseok joins them, somehow taking up half the couch just on his own.  
  
“You're welcome,” he says. “Name your first born after me.”  
  
“Little baby Minseokkie, with a little baby six pack,” Baekhyun grins, snatches the milk back. “Why’d you make me take the classes again? I don't remember.”  
  
“Because your singing started to suck,” Jongdae grins lazily, “and it was annoying for everyone.”  
  
“It's good now though, right?”  
  
“It’s alright,” Minseok shrugs. “If I knew I just had to get you a date I would've done it ages ago.”  
  
“Thanks, hyung.”  
  
“But if you bring him over and act all cute we’re kicking you out,” says Jongdae.  
  
“Like you haven't been doing that to me for three years.”  
  
Baekhyun expects Jongdae to kick him or Minseok to pinch him, but nothing happens, they just laugh, Jongdae loud and Minseok quiet. He doesn't push it, he shuffles back in his seat, sips from the bottle, pink and sweet. Everything's been fixed, he thinks, kicking his legs happily. Maybe he'll get Yixing flowers. Maybe he’ll get him flowers and kiss him until he's gasping.  
  
They fall into a relationship so easily it should be scary, but it isn't. Baekhyun goes back to the art department the next day to finish the mug and Yixing pulls him into the room by the collar of his shirt, locks the door while Baekhyun giggles, presses him against the wall to kiss him, hands in his hair, jaw between his palms. He kisses him like he's been waiting for it his whole life, holding his breath and taking all he wants, through his skin, his tongue, his teeth against the tight softness of his lips. Baekhyun matches him in fierceness, heart thudding in his chest so wildly he thinks he might pass out, but he doesn't, just pulls Yixing closer.  
  
They get back to the mug eventually, pressing the handle into the side, scratching their initials into the bottom. They put it in the kiln, but it's not full so they don't fire it yet. Yixing has class then and they walk there together, Yixing carrying his thousand bags, refusing to let Baekhyun take any of them, teasing him gently until he pouts and stomps and then steals one, shrugs it up on a shoulder, and and links their arms together. It feels right, thinks Baekhyun then, watching their merged shadows on the sidewalk, to be next to him.  
  
It's not a pottery class that make his vocal classes more successful, his diction and his theory too. It's not cool palms on clay or a spinning wheel or coiled pots. It's not even Yixing, pottery angel, not entirely anyway. It's just harder to be bored when there's a boy with dimples making soft noises as Baekhyun unbuttons his shirt. It's easier to feel like a year more of this isn't much, isn't really anything at all, compared to just three minutes drawing spirals on Yixing’s thigh.  
  
Semester finishes quickly and easily and it gets cold but Baekhyun doesn't feel it. He watches movies with Jongdae and Minseok, who hold hands when they think he isn't looking. He goes to the pottery room and watches Yixing make things with his hands and helps him sometimes, with the details, with the glazes, kissing his cheek so he laughs. He goes to Yixing’s dance practice rooms and watches him make his body move like water and shadows.  
  
Baekhyun goes to his dance performances and Yixing comes to his singing ones. He doesn’t ever look for him, doesn’t see him in the crowd, but he’s always there afterwards, with a yellow flower and a smile.  
  
“I beat you at flirting,” says Yixing, walking through the dark campus after the last of them, throwing his arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders, not the way they’d like to be touching, but they're in public so it's enough.  
  
“You did not,” Baekhyun scoffs, wriggling under him  
  
“You jerked off a piece of clay.”  
  
“You handprinted your ass.”  
  
“What?” Yixing blinks, confused, pulling away a little, and Baekhyun kind of wants to die, for ever thinking that clay handprints were anything more than an accident.  
  
“Nothing,” he says, smiling winningly. “Did you hear me sing? Wasn't I amazing?”  
  
“Like an angel,” says Yixing, pulling him back closer again, leaning into him.  
  
“That’s what I thought you were,” Baekhyun laughs, screws up his face, “when I first saw you.”  
  
“Silly,” says Yixing, fondly. “I thought you were beautiful.”  
  
“Silly,” murmurs Baekhyun, mockingly.  
  
They go back to Yixing’s apartment, a patchwork place just like he's a patchwork person, so comfortable and soft that Baekhyun can't help feeling like he's always home there. There are pottery pieces on every surface, both ornate and simple, bowls and teapots and a turtle ashtray. The mug they made together is in the kitchen, and Yixing gives it to Baekhyun to use every time he's there. They had glazed it yellow and it's as bright as a sunflower. Baekhyun remembers that he had almost drowned when Minseok signed him up for the triathlon and he’d almost lost his soul when Minseok had signed up for a bachelor auction and he’d been bought by the most boring person in the world. The pottery classes were alright, he thinks. For the boy he found there, not an angel, but a pretty good human. One of the best, maybe.  
  
“Bed,” says Yixing, bypassing the lounge, the kitchen, dragging Baekhyun down the hall by the wrist.  
  
“Bed,” echoes Baekhyun, happily, half a step behind.


End file.
